This Spring’s Must-See Contemporary Art Exhibitions, In London And Beyond

Sure, your local park may look tempting now that spring is on the horizon, but when you consider the near certainty of an April shower ruining your fun, a weekend gallery crawl is actually a much safer bet – even before you factor in the world-beating contemporary art that’s available to see in the UK in the coming months. Browse just some of the highlights, below.

Tracey Emin, Is This a Joke, 2009. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2026

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There really wasn’t any other place to start. Easily the most buzzed-about show of the season, Tracey Emin’s monolithic A Second Life at the Tate Modern (until 31 August) offers the most expansive, all-encompassing survey to date of Britain’s most celebrated living woman artist. A chronicle of her unflinching approach, it’s a testament to how, over four decades, Emin has taken the most raw experiences of her body, mind and soul as source material for her art; she has martyred herself, almost, in the name of making the reality of her lived experience as a woman felt – in all of its brutality, beauty and candour. No matter your relationship to, or perspective on, Emin and her work, it’s a landmark show that vindicates her reputation as one of Britain’s great artists.

Upriver at Tate Britain, another major survey show, this time of British painter Hurvin Anderson (26 March to 23 August). Across more than 80 vibrant paintings and through a personal prism, the show paints a contemporary history of movement between the UK and the Caribbean, contemplating notions of belonging and diaspora – a particularly salient work being a 24-panel mural-style piece, reworked for its presentation here.

Close by at Hayward Gallery, Chiharu Shiota’s Threads of Life (17 February to 30 May) – a mycelial web of scarlet yarn – continues its sell-out streak. Meanwhile, next door, Skate 50 (30 Apr to 21 Jun) commemorates 50 years since London’s skateboarders first took up informal residency beneath the Southbank Centre’s QEII Hall, featuring photographic and video documentation from across the years, with contributions from the likes of Beatrice Dillon and Palace co-founder Lev Tanju.

Across the river, a fleeting show of musical visionary Arca’s paintings (6 to 17 April) is among the highlights of the ICA’s spring programme, alongside Genuine Fake Premium Economy (1 May to 5 July), a mixed-media triple headliner featuring American artists Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory, exploring themes of class and inheritance through an expectedly sardonic lens. At the Royal Academy, a similar wry wit echoes across Rose Wylie’s vast canvases (until 19 April); read more about the rebellious painter and the show of her lifetime here.